When Everything's Made to Be Broken
by strangervision
Summary: Budapest is Clint being left; Budapest is Natasha coming home.


**When everything's made to be broken/I just want you to know who I am**

Their bodies are broken in one way or another, for one.

Natasha's positive she's sprained a thumb from all the firing she's done, and she has scrapes across her shoulder from being in the line of fire. Clint's fingers are raw from loosing arrows and his back muscle feels strained; as long as he moves a part of his lower back a throbbing ache settles in. Because SHIELD is sending people in to clear the relatively minor mess off the streets, they're left to clean each other up.

It's not a very spectacular mission, so it's safe to say that Budapest is not a place that will be particularly etched into their memories. After all, it's just a lot of firing and fighting; minimal _thinking_ and more _doing_ to keep themselves alive (and a fair bit of civilians dying in the crossfire. Natasha thinks that since most of the population is Christian anyway, dying is less painful than being here).

She's always taken the world with a bunch of salt anyway. It's not that she doesn't feel, it's that for so long she's used her feelings for work, for the _greater good_, that she doesn't know how to treat them like part of her heart instead of her brain anymore. Everything is made to be broken. Natasha's okay with that; maybe has always been. She's always been good at dealing.

She patches the scrapes on Clint's face, slaps some ointment on his back where his skin is an angry, taut red, leaves him to clean up the split lips and sore fingers while she disinfects her own abrasions. Afterwards, while she's icing her thumb and he's smoothing gauze over her surface wounds, she feels a stab of wistfulness pass through her. He stills, too, and she looks up to meet his soft gaze.

"Why didn't you kill me, Clint? Everything is made to be broken; we all die anyway."

There is a pause, as though he's picking words to say like flowers to form a bouquet. Eventually he gifts her a sentence: "I couldn't, not the way you were looking at me."

She knows then that he knows her, without her having to say a single word in explanation. For all they say about eyes being the window to one's soul, she's pretty sure she can see the emotions and blood in his marrow; see herself in his tender eyes.

She kisses him, and feels him taste her like he's always known to look for her in her mouth, her words, her skin and her interrogation tactics. She kisses him, and the knowledge that he knows her; has her turned inside out in his mind without ascribing any pre-conceived-anything on her – it makes her system flood with ragged fear.

They're both broken people, but maybe he knows more about how she is so than she does him. They're both broken people, so tonight she fits herself to him and tries to feel like having someone know her will be completing the jigsaw puzzle; tries not to think about the Jigsaw that makes people take themselves apart, or the fear tight in her belly. Maybe if she fucks Clint into orgasm, the coiling will stop.

It doesn't, so the next morning when Clint wakes from sleep to find her gone, that's how he remembers Budapest. Budapest is Natasha leaving, and Clint being left.

SHIELD doesn't expect them back until two days later, so the tickets aren't scheduled till then. Clint spends the day he wakes up alone wandering around the city. Since the target organisation has been taken down, he walks around with a gun in his pocket just to be safe. He's trawling the malls and getting himself a coffee late in the evening when Natasha spots him. She doesn't approach him; knows he's got it together enough on his own that she can take some time off. He sits for hours, and she watches from a deli across the street, simultaneously making sure that he doesn't go on a self-destructive streak and slowly unknotting the fear in the pit of her tummy.

They've been partners for two years now; gone on various assignments together, so she's not sure why she should be so frightened that he can see her for her broken pieces, loosely strung together with avoidance and the way she dances around herself like she's infested with landmines. She's always careful not to think about how he's always known her, since the moment she let the regret flicker across her face when she stared his arrow in the tip, so now when she confronts it the whiplash is nothing short of terrible.

At the end of the day, she watches Clint leave the café and make his way back to the hotel where she knows he'll pack up and leave without her. It's not like he wants to, but he knows, like she does, that people cannot be homes and so he knows to give her space. This realisation that he knows her enough not to be on eggshells around her gives her equilibrium. With a start, she realises that if she'd want anyone to know her at all, she would only want it to be him.

After all, past the great deal of red on her ledger and her belief that everything is damned in its own existence, Natasha realises that you can indeed cement yourself in someone who has always known you, someone who was ordered to kill you but chose not to, chooses everyday not to harm a hair on your head. What would she be if nobody knew it? The fear is still there, but if she cannot work it out, she wonders if maybe he can.

He isn't asleep when she pads softly back into the room. He's in a corner, feverishly packing and repacking his belongings. She's seen it before, he looks as terse and focused as he does when he's shooting targets. She swallows softly, because this time she has to do this with her heart and not her brain and it's dangerous ground. She's on thin ice and she's scared it will break.

"Clint," she starts, and she sees him flinch visibly – from straightening his back or hearing her say his name, she isn't sure.

"Please don't," he murmurs back, not meeting her firm gaze as he brushes past her to go into the bathroom. As he leans over the sink, he tries not to pay any notice to the burning in his lower back, concentrating instead on changing the covers for his scrapes. Frustrated that he doesn't want to deal, she yanks at his shirt until she's forced him to sit on the counter as she cleans his wounds.

"Listen to me," she grits out, trying not to let her emotions get too much ahead of her, "I came back."

"Is that supposed to mean shit?" he snarks back; and she knows he's trying to deny the heart he's always had. She has to give him credit, she left after their first fuck and he's on guard the way he always is on a mission.

She pulls back despite the frustration growing in her veins, stops patching him up to stare him down.

"I left because I was scared, okay? Because you know me like no one ever has and I've never even had to tell you anything. You said I looked at you like I knew your heart but Clint Barton, you're the one who's turned me inside out and read inside my skin like it's a fucking novel. You know me like I know how to get information out of someone and that freaks me the fuck out. I'm not apologising for it."

Her words are quiet but he can hear the emotion behind them that he knows she won't show unless it counts. He's not quite sure how to respond. What is an appropriate response for when someone confesses they're scared of the way you know and understand them? Clint is lost like he always is around her. For all that he knows about her, he's never known how to be on tippy toes around her so he's just settled for walking, like there's nothing wrong, like there never had been.

She takes a deep breath, and he looks stubbornly at the soiled gauze beside his little finger.

"Look, " she murmurs, pressing her fingers to his thighs, "I'm sorry anyway, because I know I hurt you. I just wanted to tell you that I cleared my head. I know I always say we're all born to die, but if it's really so then I want to be broken knowing that someone other than me knows me. I can't promise I'll stop being scared, but if I don't know how to work my emotions out then maybe you do,"

It's a confession as good as any other, and Clint relents in his mind, thinks that maybe if she is willing to be open about this, it means that she's willing to let him have her back and willing to guard his. He'll gladly untangle the hardest knots of fear and curl into her in sleep; soothe away her fevered nightmares and make himself a home for her if she wants. She only needs someone to know her, simply and without assumption, and if he can then he will, or he will die trying.

She's waiting with bated breath as he meets her gaze and levels his look with hers. He takes her fingers and loops them in his, and as he folds his arms around her she knows that his breath on her shoulder is as good a promise as hers against his neck; knows that for the next moments, their bodies fitting together is an agreement for no more secrets; one that means they can be vulnerable around each other and strong with the other.

This is how Natasha remembers Budapest as they leave on commercial planes the next day: Budapest is fear she allows herself to confront for the first time in two years. Budapest is a promise, an agreement, is level ground. Budapest is Natasha coming back home.


End file.
